The films and journalism of John Pilger

'War on Terror' a smokescreen created by the ultimate terrorist, America itself

22 July 2002

As the West prepares for an assault on Iraq, John Pilger argues that
'war on terror' is a smokescreen created by the ultimate terrorist ...
America itself.

It is 10 months since 11 September, and still the great charade plays
on. Having appropriated our shocked response to that momentous day, the
rulers of the world have since ground our language into a paean of
cliches and lies about the 'war on terrorism' - when the most enduring
menace, and source of terror, is them.

The fanatics who attacked America came from Saudi Arabia and Egypt.
No bombs fell on these American protectorates. Instead, more than 5,000
civilians have been bombed to death in stricken Afghanistan, the latest a
wedding party of 40 people, mostly women and children. Not a single
al-Qaeda leader of importance has been caught.

Following this 'stunning victory', hundreds of prisoners were shipped
to an American concentration camp in Cuba, where they have been held
against all the conventions of war and international law. No evidence of
their alleged crimes has been produced, and the FBI confirms only one
is a genuine suspect. In the United States, more than 1,000 people of
Muslim background have 'disappeared'; none has been charged. Under the
draconian Patriot Act, the FBI's new powers include the authority to go
into libraries and ask who is reading what.

Meanwhile, the Blair government has made fools of the British Army by
insisting they pursue warring tribesmen: exactly what squaddies in
putties and pith helmets did over a century ago when Lord Curzon,
Viceroy of India, described Afghanistan as one of the 'pieces on a
chessboard upon which is being played out a great game for the
domination of the world'.

There is no war on terrorism; it is the great game speeded up. The
difference is the rampant nature of the superpower, ensuring infinite
dangers for us all.

Having swept the Palestinians into the arms of the supreme terrorist
Ariel Sharon, the Christian Right fundamentalists running the plutocracy
in Washington, now replenish their arsenal in preparation for an attack
on the 22 million suffering people of Iraq. Should anyone need
reminding, Iraq is a nation held hostage to an American-led embargo
every bit as barbaric as the dictatorship over which Iraqis have no
control. Contrary to propaganda orchestrated from Washington and London,
the coming attack has nothing to do with Saddam Hussein's 'weapons of
mass destruction', if these exist at all. The reason is that America
wants a more compliant thug to run the world's second greatest source of
oil.

The drum-beaters rarely mention this truth, and the people of Iraq.
Everyone is Saddam Hussein, the demon of demons. Four years ago, the
Pentagon warned President Clinton that an all-out attack on Iraq might
kill 'at least' 10,000 civilians: that, too, is unmentionable. In a
sustained propaganda campaign to justify this outrage, journalists on
both sides of the Atlantic have been used as channels, 'conduits', for a
stream of rumours and lies. These have ranged from false claims about
an Iraqi connection with the anthrax attacks in America to a discredited
link between the leader of the 11 September hijacks and Iraqi
intelligence. When the attack comes, these consorting journalists will
share responsibility for the crime.

It was Tony Blair who served notice that imperialism's return journey
to respectability was under way. Hark, the Christian gentleman-bomber's
vision of a better world for 'the starving, the wretched, the
dispossessed, the ignorant, those living in want and squalor from the
deserts of northern Africa to the slums of Gaza to the mountain ranges
of Afghanistan.' Hark, his 'abiding' concern for the 'human rights of
the suffering women of Afghanistan' as he colluded with Bush who, as the
New York Times reported, 'demanded the elimination of truck convoys
that provide much of the food and other supplies to Afghanistan's
civilian population'. Hark his compassion for the 'dispossessed' in the
'slums of Gaza', where Israeli gunships, manufactured with vital British
parts, fire their missiles into crowded civilian areas.

As Frank Furedi reminds us in The New Ideology of Imperialism , it is
not long ago 'that the moral claims of imperialism were seldom
questioned in the West. Imperialism and the global expansion of the
western powers were represented in unambiguously positive terms as a
major contributor to human civilisation.' The quest went wrong when it
was clear that fascism was imperialism, too, and the word vanished from
academic discourse. In the best Stalinist tradition, imperialism no
longer existed. Today, the preferred euphemism is 'civilisation'; or if
an adjective is required, 'cultural'.

From Italy's Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, an ally of
crypto-fascists, to impeccably liberal commentators, the new
imperialists share a concept whose true meaning relies on a xenophobic
or racist comparison with those who are deemed uncivilised, culturally
inferior and might challenge the 'values' of the West. Watch the
'debates' on Newsnight. The question is how best 'we' can deal with the
problem of 'them'.

For much of the western media, especially those commentators in
thrall to and neutered by the supercult of America, the most salient
truths remain taboos. Professor Richard Falk, of Cornell university, put
it succinctly some years ago. Western foreign policy, he wrote, is
propagated in the media 'through a self righteous, one-way moral/legal
screen [with] positive images of western values and innocence portrayed
as threatened, validating a campaign of unrestricted violence'.

Perhaps the most important taboo is the longevity of the United
States as both a terrorist state and a haven for terrorists. That the US
is the only state on record to have been condemned by the World Court
for international terrorism (in Nicaragua) and has vetoed a UN Security
Council resolution calling on governments to observe international law,
is unmentionable.

'In the war against terrorism,' said Bush from his bunker following
11 September, 'we're going to hunt down these evil-doers wherever they
are, no matter how long it takes.'

Strictly speaking, it should not take long, as more terrorists are
given training and sanctuary in the United States than anywhere on
earth. They include mass murderers, torturers, former and future tyrants
and assorted international criminals. This is virtually unknown to the
American public, thanks to the freest media on earth.

There is no terrorist sanctuary to compare with Florida, currently
governed by the President's brother, Jeb Bush. In his book Rogue State ,
former senior State Department official Bill Blum describes a typical
Florida trial of three anti-Castro terrorists, who hijacked a plane to
Miami at knifepoint. 'Even though the kidnapped pilot was brought back
from Cuba to testify against the men,' he wrote, 'the defence simply
told the jurors the man was lying, and the jury deliberated for less
than an hour before acquitting the defendants.'

General Jose Guillermo Garcia has lived comfortably in Florida since
the 1990s. He was head of El Salvador's military during the 1980s when
death squads with ties to the army murdered thousands of people. General
Prosper Avril, the Haitian dictator, liked to display the bloodied
victims of his torture on television. When he was overthrown, he was
flown to Florida by the US Government. Thiounn Prasith, Pol Pot's
henchman and apologist at the United Nations, lives in New York. General
Mansour Moharari, who ran the Shah of Iran's notorious prisons, is
wanted in Iran, but untroubled in the United States.

Al-Qaeda's training camps in Afghanistan were kindergartens compared
with the world's leading university of terrorism at Fort Benning in
Georgia. Known until recently as the School of the Americas, it trained
tyrants and some 60,000 Latin American special forces, paramilitaries
and intelligence agents in the black arts of terrorism.

In 1993, the UN Truth Commission on El Salvador named the army
officers who had committed the worst atrocities of the civil war;
two-thirds of them had been trained at Fort Benning. In Chile, the
school's graduates ran Pinochet's secret police and three principal
concentration camps. In 1996, the US government was forced to release
copies of the school's training manuals, which recommended blackmail,
torture, execution and the arrest of witnesses' relatives.

In recent months, the Bush regime has torn up the Kyoto treaty, which
would ease global warming, to which the United States is the greatest
contributor. It has threatened the use of nuclear weapons in
'pre-emptive' strikes (a threat echoed by Defence Minister Geoffrey
Hoon). It has tried to abort the birth of an international criminal
court. It has further undermined the United Nations by blocking a UN
investigation of the Israeli assault on a Palestinian refugee camp; and
it has ordered the Palestinians to replace their elected leader with an
American stooge. At summit conferences in Canada and Indonesia, Bush's
people have blocked hundreds of millions of dollars going to the most
deprived people on earth, those without clean water and electricity.

These facts will no doubt beckon the inane slur of
'anti-Americanism'. This is the imperial prerogative: the last refuge of
those whose contortion of intellect and morality demands a loyalty
oath. As Noam Chomsky has pointed out, the Nazis silenced argument and
criticism with 'anti German' slurs. Of course, the United States is not
Germany; it is the home of some of history's greatest civil rights
movements, such as the epic movement in the 1960s and 1970s.

I was in the US last week and glimpsed that other America, the one
rarely seen among the media and Hollywood stereotypes, and what was
clear was that it was stirring again. The other day, in an open letter
to their compatriots and the world, almost 100 of America's most
distinguished names in art, literature and education wrote this:

'Let it not be said that people in the United States did nothing when
their government declared a war without limit and instituted stark new
measures of repression. We believe that questioning, criticism and
dissent must be valued and protected. Such rights are always contested
and must be fought for. We, too, watched with shock the horrific events
of September 11. But the mourning had barely begun when our leaders
launched a spirit of revenge. The government now openly prepares to wage
war on Iraq - a country that has no connection with September 11.

'We say this to the world. Too many times in history people have
waited until it was too late to resist. We draw on the inspiration of
those who fought slavery and all those other great causes of freedom
that began with dissent. We call on all like-minded people around the
world to join us.'